Ali Khamenei

Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pugnacious moderate who survived for decades despite challenging his own turbaned elite, died on Jan. 8 after suffering a heart attack.

Iran’s senior cleric criticized what he perceived as women’s overly liberal choices of clothing “as if they were in Europe,” and accused the trend of being behind one of Iran’s rivers drying up.

BELGRADE - Iran's supreme leader reiterated his call to mistrust the US, saying talks with Washington would be futile as it is in deep crisis now and cannot solve other nations' problems. It comes as Tehran marks the anniversary of the US Embassy siege in 1979.

A bitter war of words between Iran and Saudi Arabia intensified on Sept. 7 ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage from which Iranians have been excluded for the first time in decades. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blasted the "incompetence" of the Saudi royal family as he met with the families of victims of a deadly stampede during last year's hajj.

Iran's president criticized the use of thousands of undercover morality police in Tehran to report on young women who are not wearing a full Islamic hijab or those who play loud music in their cars.

The latest elections for the Iranian Parliament (the Majlis) and the Assembly of Experts took place on Feb. 26, 2016.

Iranian moderates have won a majority in parliament and a top clerical body charged with selecting the next supreme leader, dealing a major blow to hard-liners in the first elections held since last summer's landmark nuclear agreement with world powers.

"Iran is not Saudi Arabia," Iranians always say. They hold elections and women can vote. Indeed, people turn out from time to time to vote for presidential elections, parliamentary elections and such. People vote, but whether every vote counts is a big question mark. And being "eligible" to be a candidate is a tough job.

Iranians began voting across the country on Feb. 26 in elections billed by the moderate president as vital to curbing conservative dominance in parliament and speeding up domestic reforms after a nuclear deal with world powers.

The Feb. 26 vote for Iran's parliament and the Assembly of Experts, the body that will pick the next supreme leader, have assumed an importance well beyond the perennial battles between hardliners entrenched in power and reformists seeking to unseat them.